itunes for listening to music off external hard drive on MBP?

So I checked the threads on here and tried multiple ways and cant figure this out.

I have a MBP, itunes 10.1.1, and a western digital passport essential.

I loaded pictures and my old itunes library off a HP pavilion desktop.
On my Mac, when I try and open my external hard drive off the desktop and click my itunes library file I stored from my old HP it simply wont open. I right click it and click open with itunes and the file icon fades off my screen very quickly like its trying to import it but wont. I have tried dragging it and holding option when opening itunes, which actually does display the playlist but only with explanation points because the files cannot be found.

I just want to be able to plug my external in and listen to my playlist I have stored on the western digital, on my mac book without erasing my current itunes playlist on my MBP.
How should I go about this? What am I missing?

If I understand correctly, the external probably is formatted for NTFS out of the box. That is probably causing you issues, as OS X has read-only support for NTFS volumes.

You'll want to backup the external's content, reformat it to HFS+, then replace the content from your backup. Also, remember before adding the internal tracks to your iTunes library, to uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Media folder" in the advanced preferences.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.